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Hi Project Labs! Glad you liked the interview. There are a few sources, but http://searchengineland.com/is-google-authorship-affecting-rankings-today-168230 is one of the best (note the 15% average across the sites). Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the reference to Google's formal statement, but I believe it was also via a SELand post (or possibly from an SMX conference stage discussion).
UPDATE 12/01/15: This issue is now resolved and Just Discovered Link data is back.
Sadly, I've got bad news. Due to an error we made (literally a typo on a curl command), Just Discovered Links in Open Site Explorer will be unavailable for 2-3 days. The data was actually lost, but we're re-indexing all those links now and they should be back in working order by Monday.
NOTE: this only affects link counts and links listed in the "Just Discovered" sections of OSE. No links in the main index nor any metrics (PA/DA/etc) are affected.
Our sincere apologies - we're going to build mechanisms to prevent this for the future.
Hi Adarsh - thanks for bringing up the thread. Honestly, I've seen much worse about us on the web, and I suspect it will continue.
There's usually a lot of criticism for products/services that gain popularity online, but this one doesn't bring out any specific, so it's hard to argue with. I also noticed they grouped Majestic and Moz - not sure if they realize we're two separate companies, though obviously are friendly and on good terms.
p.s. I also edited the title of your discussion post here to be more accurate to the topic 
Thanks Ajaz - outside of this beta product, all the other spots in Moz Pro will still use the DA scores (and link counts) from OSE (including Mozbar). Once we launch publicly, that'll change to the new one though.
We've seen a pattern with this stuff - it works temporarily, then gets cut in value. TLA is the one I tested last year - rankings went way up, but as soon as we dropped the links they fell (indicating that TLA stock did work). However, when we observed and talked to folks who'd turned it on and kept it on, they reported that rankings, then dropped (within ~90 days with TLA).
Recently, we've seen Google start banning many private blog networks (warning, links below contain a LOT of black hat stuff and some none-too-friendly posters as well, unfortunately):
http://www.internetmarketingtoolsupdate.com/internet-marketing-tips/seo-link-monster-warning/
Those are all in just the past week.
Google's not stupid, but I do think their webspam team has been swamped. Recently though, it feels like they're making a bit more progress, and I wouldn't be surprised if they continue kicking some tail in the link spam/black hat world.
Next time you're in Seattle, just drop me a line
Couple thoughts:
Google's always done this, they've just been more aggressive recently. Moz metrics should still be useful to help separate the wheat from the chaff, but any non-editorially-acquired links will always be risky.
We are working on a MozSpam score. Starting some data collection for a training model next week actually. I'd expect 4-6 months before it rolls out, but hopefully will be useful for exactly this kind of thing.
Hi Lee - thanks for bringing these up! I'll try to answer with regards to each of the items you've mentioned:
#1 - This is very tough at our scale (literally 1 trillion+ links, and in the latest index about to launch, 150 billion+ pages across nearly 200 million domains). However, you're correct that we're working towards a classification system that will lean on some seeding + machine learning + user input. I'd suspect 12-18 months before we can launch it, though.
#2 - This is not currently in the plans, at least not at full web scale. We will have Blogscape back up and running soon, and that crawls ~10mm+ fresh sources daily, so if you have a link/mention on a blog/forum/news site with any notoriety, we should be catching those and updating hopefully every 6-8 hours. Mozscape (aka Linkscape, our full web index), will continue to be at least 2-4 weeks between updates and will require 3-4 weeks of processing. We're trying some new things on the technology side, but it's a huge challenge to get to Google's scale and keep our metrics, sorting, views, etc. Majestic can do this with their index because they simply export links directly into the consummable portion of the app, but it limits the sorting/views/filters and ability to generate high quality metrics like PA/DA/mozRank/etc.
#3 - Yup. Definitely agree and working on it. We're trying some new hardware stuff, new parallelization of processing and everything under the sun to make it work.
#4 - Our next index will probably have a lot more of this (and we'll be watching carefully to see how this performs for our customers). We're also working to build a spam score that maps against what we've seen Google penalize/ban over time (currently doing a bunch of research there), so you can get a good sense of what things are likely to be hit over time.
Mozscape/OSE is a huge priority for us and we have 7 extremely talented folks working night and day (and a lot of weekends) to improve this. In the next 3-6 months, it will get massively better than it is today - the next new index is only a few days away now, and after that, we shouldn't ever have such a long period without an update (this round was an impossibly hard-to-fathom confluence of problems that we've taken many steps to prevent from ever happening again).
Thanks for your patience and the good questions.
Hi Fabrizo - as Jake noted, this can cause penalties and problems nowadays, so I'd recommend against a direct offer of discounts or remuneration in exchange for links. I went ahead and updated my reply to that 8-year-old blog post, too.
We could probably do something that allows folks to upload their own AdWords data, but the issue, unfortunately, isn't related to account stuff, but to keyword research and search volume numbers (which are on-demand). For that, we'll need to find a different solution.
Way to be creative though!
Hi Mick - I'd say that if you're not finding value from Google+, I wouldn't worry about it. Google is investing less in it and unless you're in a community/niche where G+ is heavily used (travel, photography, online marketing are a few), probably best to put your effort elsewhere. The only real SEO benefit to G+ left is the personalization of SERPs, but that will only work if you have a large group following you who can be biased in their SERPs by their connection with you. Don't think it's geographically specific, but it's certainly niche-specific.
Best of luck!
Good news - we started working on it this quarter with the intention of having it launched by end of March. Bad news - a problem came up - we've been having serious troubles with billing and credit cards and found a ton of bugs, errors, and not applying best practices in our billing system. As a result, all the effort for this team was diverted on Sarah's instruction (I think she made the right call - we can't survive as a company if we don't get billing right). Sadly, this means the multi-seat project is now delayed until Q2. I'm hopeful they'll get it done by June.
Since the full-fledged version is very significant, I've asked the team to come up with a mimimum solution; possibly just another list without comment/submissions functionality. I hope to have that up very soon (possibly even just as an Excel download or Google Docs accessible with a password.
Kris - awesome that you "rand" some tests. I like to do that myself
One thing we've been noticing is that sites with very aggressive ads (AdSense, overlays, display, etc.) seem unusually hard hit, while content farms that are less agro on that front weren't. Maybe a user/usage data thing?
Hey Charles - I think some of the first points made in the comments are essential reading on top of the article. Specifically, the first comment notes that until/unless the poster shows the keywords targeted, it's very tough to trust the data or know if the inputs noted are causal. It's also impossible to replicate or investigate. The reply from the author points out that he hasn't tried replicating in 2015, and isn't confident it would work again.
I'd say both of those points make the techniques shown at least somewhat less trustworthy.
If you want to try spamming Google, my advice would be to experiment with sites you're willing to lose entirely and never recover. Also be ready for very spiky and short-term-focused revenue. You could make a lot of money for a few months, then make nothing for a long time (as many spammers have found).
Also recommended reading: http://inbound.org/post/view/confessions-of-a-google-spammer - a good piece from a former spammer on the techniques and process used, and on Google's evolution around webspam and manipulative links.
Hey Patrick - good question, because I think this will have a dramatic, mostly negative, definitely industry-shaking-up effect on web access and how web marketing will have to be done. I covered my thoughts here: https://moz.com/blog/net-neutrality-seo-whiteboard-friday
Hi Scott - some website builders that might be worth investigation (and will almost definitely be more SEO-friendly than the experience you've described) include:
I'm partial to Wordpress (and there's lots of good hosting options) because of its flexibility, but there's plenty of benefits to other platforms as well.
It's weird that the bot is accepting cookies, but with a bounce rate that high, I agree it's probably something automated (though it could be people who were looking for something else or were directed there by an email or an app accidentally). You can look through your logs to see IP addresses and then do as Atakala says and block the traffic if you're worried about bandwidth. You can also just filter it out in GA by excluding US traffic (if your'e worried about analytics being messed up).
It's funny - I'm presenting today to the entire staff at SEOmoz for our quarterly "all hands" meeting, and a screenshot of this thread is exactly what I needed
The barrier to entry thing is interesting - at first we worried it would mean that participation might not be as heavy as others, but the barrier to entry clearly carried value. Will make sure to give props to the team members who worked on this.
And just FYI - we plan lots more improvements in the future, so if you've got suggestions, don't hesitate to make 'em!
EGOL - I've been trying to lure you to Moz for years. Who knew this is all it took